Things with Feathers
by narcolepticbadger
Summary: Hope is not the only thing with feathers. Regina dreads spring and its reminders of everything she has lost - but there is comfort to be found in it, too. Outlaw Queen with a side of Emma & Regina bonding. Alternate 4b.
1. Chapter 1

My attempt to collect all the chapters in one place. Initially prompted by Black-throatedblue to do "something atmospheric about spring," though this story continues to evolve into much more than that. Not canon-compliant with season 4b. Title borrowed from Emily Dickinson's "'Hope' is the thing with feathers."

* * *

The wind changed, the days grew longer, the world unfolded in a series of tiny awakenings, and Regina wanted nothing more than to draw her blinds against the beauty, against the signs of new life that hounded her so insistently, and retreat behind the walls she had built for herself.

As long as Storybrooke had been paralyzed by winter, she had been able to convince herself that she was fine – everything was fine – had seized onto Henry and the mayoral office and, _gods_ , even the Charmings, wrapping herself in distractions like layers against the cold. She filled hour after hour with paperwork, small talk over hot chocolate (or, more often than not, a good merlot), anything that would keep thoughts of what she had lost – what she had let go, like he was a wild animal who had always belonged to the woods more than to her – tamped down in a place she could easily (not easily, never easily, but she could try) sidestep.

And if his voice, his scent, his laughing blue eyes sometimes came to her in the night, well, they were hazy things, half-remembered, and she never could be certain that she had been visited by them at all.

Fire had always been her strength – oh, she knew how to burn, knew how burning had kept her alive for years – but she had welcomed the frost, the occasional snowfalls, the way winter seemed endless when one was in the midst of it, had let it smother her fire until she could blessedly feel nothing much at all, letting hours trudge into days, days into weeks of willful patience – _denial_ , some would say – as if they were all suspended in time, some dark curse settling over them once again.

Now the town was leaking meltwater, and everything that had been stripped bare was beginning to bloom again, the colors breaking open in the night so that she found herself faced with unfamiliar bursts of pinks and yellows as she walked Henry to the bus stop. The greens that budded over the ground and along the arms of trees were so bright – so… _something_ – they hurt to look at, and as much as she kept her head down, blinded herself to the early crocuses, pretended the long hours of daylight didn't leave her nervously eyeing the clock for the moment it was dark enough for her to slink home without being reminded every other step of how long, exactly, it had been since he disappeared into the world beyond the town line. How much time had slipped away since he had nearly taken her along with him – like he had taken all of her hopes, and all of her heart – fingers pulling against her hand with all his strength, and still not enough to move her.

She felt the heat creeping along her bones as winter receded, her magic closer to the surface than it had been in months, and the soft breezes, the delicate touches of spring, could only stoke her higher, higher, until she was roaring under her own skin, lighted by a ceaseless fever that had Snow (and Emma, and Henry) frowning with concern, guarding their tongues as if they knew she was one word away from becoming wildfire.

As if they knew Regina would do more than burn this time, if she got loose.

She was wary, stuck to the safest paths and routines that she knew, and still, one afternoon, she turned the corner that led away from Granny's and felt her knees abruptly buckle as all the smells of the forest blew past her – pine and wet soil and firepit ashes – and, as her coffee splashed over the sidewalk and she reached out to break her fall, she saw that smoke was curling outwards from her hands, halfway to a flame.

Despite the panic in her lungs, the sickening lightheadedness that had her squeezing her eyes shut, she managed to pull herself together long enough to teleport to the safest place she could think of, her knees finally hitting the cold, colorless tiles of her office.

For a few bottomless moments she could only heave breaths in and out, eyes and fists clenched shut painfully until she felt somewhat grounded again. She unfolded herself in degrees, blinked away the salt from the corners of her eyes – _the smoke_ , she told herself resolutely _, it was only the smoke that had brought on irritated tears_ – and stepped unsteadily over to the window that overlooked her apple tree.

She twisted the lock and eased it open, the frame creaking with disuse, and let the air wash over her, never sure if she was merely trying to breathe more easily or if she wanted to fuel the fire in her bones, but she stood and wondered and watched the birds flit from one branch to another, calling to each other joyously as they stretched their wings.

She almost missed the bird closest to her until it sang, and the sight of its red breast caught in her throat like a pebble.

Her hands flashed out warningly, but there was no smoke this time, and the startled, wounded noise she made only drew the attention of the robin, causing it to cock its head _just so_ , and suddenly she was trembling again, pinned under its curious gaze.

It nudged closer to her along the branch and chirruped, a drifting set of notes that upturned at the end, so like his playful _milady_ that she surprised herself with a laugh, found herself leaning closer to hear his words more clearly.

It was everything her mother warned her about, everything that she had spent a lifetime steeling herself against, and yet it didn't feel like foolishness at all when she told the robin, softly, "I've missed you too."


	2. Chapter 2

No one spoke his name.

No one spoke about the men still living in the forest, or New York, or the two teenagers Emma had busted for pickpocketing last week.

A thousand conversation topics suddenly off-limits because a certain vengeance-and-bloodshed-prone mayor kept turning up at the loft like a stray. Ostensibly to help Henry with a chemistry project, or to finalize Mary Margaret's resignation and transferal of duties, and they all smiled tightly and pretended that this was the truth, that this wasn't about helping Regina stay away from the edge. A loose memory, like a stone, could pick up speed, become an avalanche, and bury a city.

Emma knew that. Her parents knew that. Even Henry was attuned to the sound of things falling out of place.

They had all seen the way Regina hesitated when she answered her phone, the unspoken _Robin_ that hung in the space after every bated-breath "hello?"

They had all seen smoke, its warning cry of _fire!_ , curling out of Regina's sleeves, rolling off her clothes in soft, startling waves.

And so they invited her in, kept a fifth place set at the dinner table, and let Regina guide their conversations into safe territory. It was like one of Henry's operations, Emma supposed, something worthy of a codename, as they played at deceiving each other, as they took turns looking the other way.

"You don't have to do that, you know," Regina snapped at her one day, after they brushed elbows in the narrow entryway.

"Do what?"

"Treat me like I'm going to break if you talk about Robin." Regina's eyes blazed into hers, indignant and asking for anything but pity, but her voice still caught on his name, the rasp of steel on flint, and Emma knew it was the first time she had spoken it aloud since the day at the town line. "He's gone, he _left_ because he had to, and it's fine. It's done."

"Okay," Emma said, and she let Regina push past her, out the door and down the stairs, and the smell of something burning lingered in the room no matter how many times Emma scrubbed and aired and sprayed.

They didn't talk about it when Regina showed up a few hours later with a lasagna, dropping it on the kitchen table with a clatter that made Emma jump.

"I thought Henry…well, _all_ of you could use something more digestible than grilled cheese," Regina said pointedly. "I trust you can handle a little heat."

Emma rolled her eyes. "It's a few red pepper flakes, Regina, not the fires of hell. I've got this."

They didn't talk about it on the nights Regina couldn't sleep, the nights when Emma stayed up past the point of exhaustion so she wouldn't be alone.

They didn't talk about it when Regina brought coffee to the sheriff's station or when Emma brought salads and root beer (and grilled cheese, once, just to give Regina reason to grudgingly accept comfort food) to the mayor's office, those long hours spent researching the Author and paging through the storybook in case it still had secrets to reveal.

They didn't talk about it, and the more they didn't, the better Regina seemed: stable, snarky, less dead in the eyes. She wasn't _fine_ , not even close to it – Emma wasn't that much of an idiot – but if Regina chose to do her grieving in private, at least she _was_ grieving, as much as she would allow herself to.

...

It was a Wednesday afternoon, a boredom-loves-company kind of day, and Emma balanced two take-out boxes and two sodas as she shouldered open the door to Regina's office. The scuffle took Regina by surprise – she was standing at the window behind her desk, back to the door, and at the sound of Emma's intrusion she slammed the sash down and whirled around, arms spread as if she was being pulled in different directions.

Emma stared back at her, coloring under the intensity of Regina's gaze. "Guess I should have knocked, huh?" she asked weakly.

The tension left Regina's body, not altogether but enough, and she nodded, sinking back against the glass until her posture was almost casual.

Emma didn't miss the glance Regina darted behind her, checking for something – someone? – through the window, and she stepped closer to the desk that separated them, until she could see the entire scene, until she could see the defensive fists Regina was making.

She might have wondered what Regina was hiding – _protecting_ – this time, and what it had to do with Robin, if there hadn't been a single feather, brown edged with red, lying at Regina's feet.

Oh. _Oh_. That was…possibly a sign that Regina had finally lost it, but sweet. Really sweet.

Emma bit down the urge to say something, to needle her just a bit about communing with birds, but it was clear that Regina – alternately fidgety and watchful – wanted to keep this, whatever it was, for herself.

She grabbed one of the root beers and headed for the sofa, giving Regina time to pick up the feather and tuck it away in one of her drawers. A reminder, perhaps, that not all of her hopes had been grounded.

She heard the clink of a bottle, and Regina grumbled behind her, "No bottle opener? What, am I supposed to pry the cap off with my teeth?"

"You were Rumplestiltskin's best student, you absorbed a death curse, you've faced off against some seriously scary Big Bads, and you're telling me you can't remove a bottle cap?" Emma asked, shaking her head.

"Is that a challenge, dear?"

A slow, dangerous smile spread across Regina's face, and Emma couldn't help smiling in return. This was going to be good.


	3. Chapter 3

The words in front of her simply would not cooperate.

Regina squinted, she tilted the paper on its side, she growled curses under her breath to no avail – her vision drifted drunkenly across the page, skipping from _compliance_ to _resolution_ to _forfeit_ with no context underpinning them, and she was forced to drop the report back into the pile that had, maddeningly, now taken over a full third of her desk.

She gave a pitiful sigh, knowing there was no one near enough to hear it, and let her head fall forward to rest in the palms of her hands where the world was blissfully dark and quiet.

The work was drowning her.

She had accepted her reinstatement as mayor readily, needing the sense of purpose it gave her, needing to do something more than while away the days by tracking down increasingly far-fetched leads about the Author, but that had been before Team Villain had crashed Storybrooke and dragged her along for the ride. Nights spent drinking, magicking, and wreaking general havoc around town (and feigning delight about all of those things) did not lead into days of high productivity at the office. Obviously.

She wasn't even hungover this time, which was a rarity, as Cruella drank enough to pickle her own organs in gin and always insisted that the others partake, even if they couldn't keep up with her. No, today's lethargy and inability to focus was down to pure exhaustion, the result of too many sleepless nights and too many days fueled by little more than caffeine.

She had slipped back into the house barely an hour before she had needed to rouse Henry for school. She had picked at her oatmeal while the sun pushed its way in through the kitchen windows, and Henry had recited the first three rows of the periodic table over bacon and eggs, and she had brushed away the concern in his questions about her nightly activities with a low chuckle and _I already passed my test – shouldn't you be concentrating on yours?_

His departure for school had had her eyeing the sofa with longing, wondering if she could sneak a nap, just a few minutes of stillness, before going to the office, but she knew that teasing herself with a chance for proper sleep would do nothing for her. Except make her late, and more tired and ornery than she already was.

And here she was, fighting back a headache and trying to blink the room back into focus and wishing that Snow hadn't been quite so eager to give up all of her mayoral duties at once.

One of Regina's hands wandered over to the cup of coffee she had poured – she realized a sip too late – almost an hour before, now grown cold and decidedly undrinkable. She forced herself to swallow, pulled a face, and muttered, "Typical," just in time for Emma to stop herself short in the doorway.

"What?" she asked, sounding affronted.

"Not you. My coffee."

"Oh, then it's a good thing I'm here." Emma approached the desk with a satisfied smile, waggling the paper bag in her hand and producing a to-go cup from Granny's from seemingly nowhere. "Thought you could use some sustenance."

"You thought correctly," Regina admitted, wrapping both hands around the fresh coffee and breathing in its richness before she drank.

Sometimes she was still taken aback by how normal it had become for Emma to barge into her office bearing food. There had been more than a few misfires along the way – one memorable incident had left them arguing over a plate of grilled cheese so fiercely that David had been called to intervene – but Emma had learned early-on how Regina liked her coffee, and it was one thing she always, _always_ got right. Dark roast, no sugar, and just enough milk to break the blackness into something a little softer.

"I don't know how you do it," Emma began, and Regina sat up straight, ready to insist that working undercover and being mayor and co-parenting a teenager were things she was fully capable of doing, only for Emma to grimace and gesture to her cup. "That stuff's strong enough to strip the taste buds off your tongue."

Regina smirked. "What can I say, dear? Black's always been my color." She looked at the paper bag Emma had dropped on her desk with suspicion, noting that one corner of it was mottled with grease. "Do I even want to know what's in there?"

"Something you won't entirely hate," Emma hedged playfully as she ran a thumb down the edge of a stack of proposed budget cuts should have been dealt with two months ago. "Looks like you've got your work cut out for you, Madam Mayor."

"I'll have you know that half of this paperwork was left by your mother."

"And that just goes to show that Storybrooke won't fall apart if you're a few reports behind schedule."

"Meaning what, Miss Swan?" Regina pressed, her eyes narrowing dangerously. "That it's okay to shirk my duties here because I have other things on my mind?"

Emma sighed. "Yeah, well, you can hardly argue that," she paused to glance at the title of the folder on top of the pile, "amendments to the zoning code are a life-or-death situation right now."

A sharp retort was already forming itself on Regina's tongue, but before she could open her mouth to let it fly, Emma reached up to stifle a yawn. At this distance, there was no denying the slight slump in the younger woman's stance, or the extra lines around her eyes – she was as exhausted as Regina was, had been running on caffeine and energy pulled from who-knew-where, with that realization Regina softened her anger into a more acceptable gruffness.

"Speaking of… _situations_ , might I remind you that staying up all night to follow me around town is completely unnecessary? There's no reason both of us should be going without sleep."

Emma crossed her arms and looked at her with a mixture of frustration and amused disbelief. "Right, because I would totally be able to sleep knowing you're out there alone with three people who gave me nightmares when I was a kid."

She wheeled away from the desk, pacing towards the sofa where Marian (the name wrenched something in Regina's heart even now) had lain and looking as if she was contemplating throwing herself down onto it like a teenager being dramatic. She leaned against its back instead, eyes bright with the kind of earnestness that Regina had come to grudgingly respect in her, and spoke in bursts, her hands rising to punctuate certain words.

"I _know_ you can handle yourself, Regina, but…you need to know I have your back, in here and out there. If that means staking out Gold's cabin by night and bringing you coffee and bear claws every morning, that's cool. If it means sorting through proposals and permit requests so you can take a break, that's cool too. Okay?"

Regina was not one for speeches, still couldn't listen to talk of loyalty and family without half-rolling her eyes, but she valued her relationship with Emma, what it had grown into after years of mistrust and stubbornness and halting compromises on both their parts. She disagreed with Emma about, well, _everything_ relating to Cruella, Ursula, and Maleficent and how to handle them, but she knew Emma was trying to help in her own way and, more, she appreciated it.

"Thank you, Emma," she said sincerely, not missing the gratified smile that Emma beamed at her, before snapping back to business-mode. "I think the coffee will suffice for now."

Emma was already walking towards the door, laughter evident in her voice as she called over her shoulder, "Don't worry, I ate the bear claw. You'll like what's in the bag – trust me."

"There are few things that induce doubt more quickly than ordering someone to trust you, Miss Swan," Regina said under her breath, but she smiled and sipped at her coffee again, giving in to her curiosity only when Emma's footsteps had long since faded away.

It was a muffin, a surprisingly sensible apple-cinnamon and not the sticky chocolate confection Emma surely would have chosen for herself, and its center was still warm and fragrant with spices.

Armed with coffee and pastry, Regina settled into her work and managed to reduce the pile by a solid inch before her neck began to ache, bent as it was over the desk. She leaned back in her chair, stretched her fingers from where they had been clamped around her pen, and wondered if anyone would notice if she left – she wouldn't go far, just a walk to loosen her muscles and clear her head.

She capped the pen decisively and gathered a few revised drafts for her outbox, only to spill them across the floor at the papery sound of wings against the window behind her, loud enough to startle her despite the glass between them.

Storybrooke had been thick with robins ever since the weather had turned, and there was no reason to think that this was the same bird – the one she had taken to leaving a scattering of crumbs for, the one she had almost decapitated in her rush to conceal it when Emma had walked in unannounced the other day, the one she had rather stupidly come to refer to as _Robin_.

And yet she thought of it as hers, this one who fluttered to her windowsill and seemed to wait expectantly, a little tamer than all the others.

It cocked its head as she approached and skipped back to the safety of the apple tree when she eased the window open.

Regina sighed. "So you haven't forgiven me for last time, huh?"

She backed off a little, trying to make the windowsill more inviting, but the robin kept its distance, head darting around at odd intervals as it catalogued the sounds of traffic and human activity below.

The remains of her muffin lay slightly spread over the left-hand corner of her desk, and she broke off a piece to crumble for the bird, hoping to tempt it closer. She was being absurd – what difference did it make if a common robin watched her from the branches of a tree or dared to venture nearer her hand? – but she couldn't shake the need to make the bird _come_ , as if there was some fateful sign to be read from its actions, if it showed a preference for the taste of apples, if it responded to its ( _his_ ) name, the name she had forced upon it just to be able to speak the word out loud when she could no longer stifle her need. To call for Robin and be answered with birdsong, a painful reminder of the absence of his voice, his presence, but comforting in some primal way.

It was a poor secret to hold – it reeked of weakness, and madness, and she should probably be more concerned about the implications of both – but it was hers, and that let her lay claim to him just a bit longer, and so the secret, and the bird, were all the dearer for that.

The robin eyed the muffin crumbs but made no move for them, instead flicking its wings down and out and jitter-stepping along the branch. So her attempt at protecting the bird from Emma's blundering interference (foiled _again_ by a Charming – surprise, surprise) had only made it more skittish, restless in her keeping. Another wild thing staying wild, and she appreciated that, she understood, but that didn't stop her from wanting all of it to mean _more_.

She turned back to her desk, knelt to collect the papers she had dropped earlier, and the fact that she was eye-level with the drawer that held a meticulously reconstructed page from the storybook and a certain brown-and-russet feather had her twisting her lips into a grimace, sweeping up her papers with more force than necessary and crumpling their edges, and so what if she left another part of her life disordered and a little broken?

It was all she could do not to throw them in the waste bin or out the window, let them fly, and maybe she would have (she wouldn't have – she would start again, make clean copies, signed and filed when her hands were calmer) if she hadn't registered movement in the corner of her vision and been confronted with the wholly unexpected image of a robin perched on the edge of her desk, inches from her head, its black eyes taking in her fury with curiosity.

She gaped at it. A full, graceless, slack-jawed gape.

And continued gaping at it while it shook off her scrutiny with a fluff of its feathers and started to peck at the larger stumps of her muffin. Like the crumbs on her windowsill were a paltry offering, a diversion from the real prize.

"You…" she breathed, and it flicked its head back to her as she struggled to complete the thought. "You… _thief_ ," she said without thinking, and she felt gut-punched, winded, but – for once – the feeling never settled, and she found herself laughing, a shocked giggle that worked itself down into her chest and deepened until her shoulders were shaking.

The bird pecked again until it held a pea-sized bite of muffin in its beak, then hop-flew its way back through the window, settling on a branch just long enough for Regina to get to her feet before it was away, dropping out of sight beyond the edge of the lawn.

"Damned thief," she grumbled, fondly. "You're not nearly as charming as you think you are."

She felt lighter than she had in weeks. It didn't lessen the ache, and it didn't fill the loneliness, but it filled her in a different way, the way time with Henry and dinners with the Charmings did.

Her fingers ghosted over the drawer, _that_ drawer, the only one she kept for herself instead of for the Office of the Mayor, and she left it shut. Sometimes it was enough just to be close to it.

For all her doubt, for all her mockery of Snow's childish beliefs, sometimes there was something to be said for hope – and for the importance of birds.


	4. Chapter 4

It started with a storm, one that rumbled in from the west and kicked up the sea, and Regina welcomed it as an opportune turn in a week that had been rather relentlessly filled with town meetings and family dinners and criminal activity in the dead hours before dawn.

It was cleansing, really, to wipe away the hard lines of her makeup and hunker down with Henry over popcorn and board games as the rain lashed the windows, the evening made somehow cozier – safer – under the guttering of the lights. Professor Plum and Colonel Mustard circled each other on the board, moving between ballroom and hall and conservatory, and Henry looked at his papers intently each time, so studious and watchful that Regina couldn't help thinking that he had as much right to the sheriff's office as the crack team of Charming, Swan, and Jones did.

Hell, he'd probably _improve_ it.

A ripple of lightning hit close, and the power hummed to black before the thunder could answer. She sighed, hoping it was just the neighborhood and not the entire grid, and started sending fist-sized fireballs into the air to softly illuminate the room again.

"Isn't that cheating?" Henry asked, but he had pitched back to marvel at the bobbing lights, the same way he had watched fireworks as a little boy. "Not everyone gets stars in their house when the electricity goes out."

"You'd rather sit in the dark?" she asked back, pointedly, stretching out her foot to prod his as she laid herself down too, careful to not upset the _Clue_ board as she settled.

"I didn't say that."

They listened to the storm and felt its vibrations buckle through the floor beneath them, and Regina had a sudden wave of gratitude for all the pieces of _home_ surrounding her in that moment – for walls and soft carpeting and stars pulled to earth and, most of all, for Henry – Henry, who had grown tall and thoughtful and just now rolled his head towards her to grin.

"By the way: Mrs. Peacock, revolver, billiards room."

She threw a pillow at him.

…

Regina woke to the plinking of rain and odd numbers flashing on her alarm clock and knew that the worst must have broken overnight – calm enough now, thankfully, for someone to have restored the power without calling her in – but the sky was the same, steady grey on the other side of the curtains.

She groaned, kneading her shoulders back against the mattress, and wondered how long she could delay the rest of the day. She was used to feeling drained, to not really being rested even when she _did_ manage to fidget herself into a deeper state of sleep, but the rain was sapping her more, down past her reserves to the dry bones beneath, and soon those too might crack, and she would be left with nothing.

She was too awake to be anything but restless, and Henry needed breakfast, and she more than likely had reports of storm damage waiting for her at the office, so she stood under the shower, whisked eggs into omelettes, and followed Henry out to the school bus when he forgot his umbrella, letting the routine of it all drive her forward when her mind faltered, slipped away to other places.

The rain was a pleasant distraction, at first.

It caught at her ears while Leroy argued for new, completely impractical generators, an argument she had to squash each storm season because the 'disaster prevention and relief' budget applied to _all_ disasters, and she'd rather the town lose electricity for a few hours than have to live with the fallout from visiting ice queens or dragons or the other magical _incidents_ that seemed so inevitable these days.

It filled the spaces around her as she worked late (and past late, reaching towards another morning) and gave her empty streets and wet reflections, the only company she was up to keeping on those drives back to the house.

It stayed gentle and constant, never building back to a storm, and three days passed in stasis before she realized the wrongness of it.

For all the time she spent at her window, attentive to the changing patterns of clouds and the course of each runaway drop over glass, she had been listening for sounds _underneath_ the rain – and, despite its motion, she had found a terrible stillness within that she could no longer blind herself against.

(This was a string to pull, too destructive to resist, and she watched it unravel in her hands with dull fascination.)

Her apple tree had been plucked clean, blossoms falling heavy to the lawn in gusts that never touched her but chilled her all the same, and, through the colors in the grass, she read absence everywhere.

The birds had been missing for days, and her robin with them.

She knew better, she told herself, even now.

Wild things didn't stay, by their very definition, and he – he had always been wild, and never hers, and ( _but still_ ) what had she offered, really, except muffin crumbs and a window ledge and her own rough birdsong?

Leaving, being left, was a cycle Regina couldn't seem to fall out of, and each new loss shuttered her ribs a bit more firmly around her heart though she would deny it to her last breath.

There was a feather twinned with an old page (elsewhere: a ring, a grave), and she would let them be no more than exactly that. Lifeless things that were, had been, and gone.

But she wondered about the birds, and the rain, and turned the question in her head until it became another sound she couldn't shake: what shelter had they sought, and where?

(Robin built out his idea of _home_ from whatever he found, and, once, it had been her.)

…

She went to the loft to pick up Henry, and it led into an invitation to stay on for dinner while Hook finished quizzing him on the major naval victories of the Napoleonic Wars. She might approve of the study session more if there were fewer digressions into detailing the human gore that cannonballs created, but Henry turned his eyes on her, and she sighed, nodded.

The Charmings waved her out of the kitchen, insistent, and she ended up at another window, staring listlessly at water and glass until Mary Margaret touched her elbow.

Regina saw the soft eyes and the proffered wine, and she knew that a conversation she didn't intend to have lay in wait behind both.

And she stalled, asked, "Where do they go, when it rains? The birds."

"Uh."

She smirked at Mary Margaret's bewilderment and took the wine, drinking more deeply than she should on an empty-but-for-coffee stomach and deciding not to care.

Mary Margaret sipped at hers, too, with a pinched look of deliberation that Regina still associated with secret-telling, and, oh, how this moment between them might have darkened even a year ago.

"They're still out there," Mary Margaret said, as if she must first convince herself of the words. "They keep to the trees a little more and make use of their feathers to hold in heat, and they wait until the moment is right."

"To do what?"

"To find their way back, I suppose. To hunt – and to fly."

One lost to the woods, one to the city, and she was likewise stranded ( _all stories must end_ ) in the distances that spanned worlds for all they might be counted in miles.

Stranded, but not alone, and it was a concession she could make, however achingly: to stand in a place of warmth and will the same for them.

She thought of Roland and leather boots and a map of the stars for all seasons, constellations painstakingly traced out on her palm in the dark, the sound of wings, and, above all, forest.

This was _home_ too, these things she carried with her, and maybe it was one they still shared, making meeting places of their memories and stealing away to them in odd moments, in the knowledge that they would always look out on the same sky.

Later, she would regret the wine and the rain and the way it quietened her into belief, but she let herself sink through it first, amending each thought of endings with a great _perhaps_ – a _for the time being_ and not a _forever_.

…

She wasn't sure when the rains faded out, but they did.

Gone, soft-footed as a thief, before she placed what was missing, though the trees and grass and she herself hung dampened in their wake.

Everything was crisp and vital, renewed by this second spring, and it was hard not to smile at the sight of girls splashing into puddles with too-large boots, or at tulips turning upwards to the light again, and Henry saying they didn't _have_ to save board games for stormy nights.

There was part of her still caught in the pause, waiting for things that might never come, and it _pulled_ until she gave in and snapped the lock over, raising the window sash a few inches (for the fresh air, she thought firmly) and sitting back, leafing through the memos on her desk for something she could lose herself in.

Perhaps he had never needed her, after all.

Perhaps he had forgotten.

She swallowed – nothing, her coffee downed this morning at the house, and she should go put a pot on – and leaned onto her elbows.

She didn't know what to do with her hands, with nothing to hold on to but papers, and it all wanted shredding, scattering to the winds; but that lesson was learned and paid for, and she was tired of chasing down the pieces only to cut herself when she tried to fit them back together.

Coffee it was then, brewed strong, and she'd hide each tremulous thought in the caffeine.

She took her time, measuring out the grinds and watching the filter drip, and everyone else carefully ignored the oddness of the mayor standing about in the kitchenette. One secretary backed out of the doorway before her second foot even touched the threshold, and it was so like the old days that Regina _hurt_ not to laugh.

She walked into her office, intent on work this time, and clicked her tongue at the signs of disturbance there, the reshuffled papers (the window, she thought) and runs of wet ink, spreading slowly –

But the prints were too measured, four-pointed, tracked like mud over her desk (in another life, Robin shuffling his feet over the welcome mat and managing to leave streaks on the floors anyway and _what are we going to do with you, thief?_ as his eyes crinkled) and it _was_ mud, and splats of bird poop, over her budget sheets and her chair and the window ledge where someone had finally found his way back.

"Shouldn't have let him in in the first place," she grumbled, lips drawn thin, as she barreled into the hallway with a basketful of wadded paper towels. "Shouldn't have let the damned thing in."

She spent a good part of the afternoon researching how to clean bird droppings from leather without ruining the grain, discreetly swabbing at her chair and glaring outside because she was sure it would leave a mark – noticeable only to her, but a mark, and the robin hadn't even stuck around long enough to be smug about it.

She saw him, once, wheeling past her apple tree with all the color of his throat open to her.

It could be any bird (it could be), but she knew him, followed him with the eye of one looking homeward, and watched him pass out of her vision with a steady heart.

Partings and returns, and she was learning the sorrowful sweetness in both.


	5. Chapter 5

The season had truly turned now, the air lofty with the green-scented rebirths that mark spring, and Regina imagined Mary Margaret smiling that particularly earnest smile of hers and chattering nonsense in her ear, conspiratorially, about leaning into the changes around them and moving forward.

Moving…on.

And Regina could almost let herself be convinced – she felt the knot around her heart loosening its pinch, and she was left half desperate to clench onto the old ache, to claim forever the steadying weight of heartbreak, and half swayed to embrace the lightness for how gently it stole over her – lulled as she was by the way Storybrooke settled into its calm, familiar ways around her.

Whatever alliance had brought Cruella, Ursula, and Maleficent together had collapsed rather spectacularly in on itself, first betrayed by Ursula, then Mal, and a final confrontation that had seen Gold slip through the cracks _again_ , Cruella dead, and Regina confined to a hospital bed for two nights for what felt like several years' worth of concussions hitting her at once.

She'd come to to the quiet burbling of voices, indistinct from the other sensations pressing in that she couldn't quite blink into order until "Mom!" cut through to the depths of her and she knew him, she knew Henry, and he was one thing to hold on to.

Her hand in his hand (bigger than hers now, and she keeps forgetting that about him), and Henry leaned across the bed to hug her gently, awkwardly, as she set her teeth and tried to lever herself up.

"I'm–"

There was an exasperated snort from the foot of the bed. "If you even think of saying _fine_ I'll have them keep you on suspicion of permanent brain damage," Emma said with a dangerous lack of humor.

They locked eyes for a moment, daring each other (like old times, though the antagonism didn't quite bite as it used to), until Regina half-growled, "Hungry," in defeat.

Emma beamed. "Lucky for you, I know where they keep the jello."

"Are you _trying_ to make me vomit?"

"Come on, it's not a real hospital visit without jello – right, kid?" Henry hummed his assent. "Is strawberry okay, or should I try to find a flavor that's less plebeian?"

Regina sighed, muttering _traitor_ to Henry from the side of her mouth. "Strawberry is fine."

To say she didn't like hospitals was pointless – did _anyone_? – but it was this kind of watchful attention, even kindly meant, the lack of control she had over even the simplest of decisions, that set her on edge.

The medications made her dull and sleepy, and the asylum-colored walls did nothing to improve her mood nor ease the way her mind skipped errantly between thoughts like a stone cast over water, but there was a certain restfulness in sitting with her son, in listening to him describe the plot of the latest issue of _Justice League_ (with sound effects to make her gasp and laugh in all the right places) – in, just for a moment, not being asked to confront whatever latest adversary was threatening to upend their lives here.

A doctor came in, and she submitted to his battery of tests if only to prove to Henry (and herself) just how fine she was. She answered a string of inane questions with as much sarcasm as she could muster, recounting her memories of the day leading up to the fight with Cruella until she unexpectedly faltered, butting up against a sea of darkness in her mind that she could not feel her way through.

"Cruella, Gold, big blast of light, and…?" she repeated, looking to Henry for help.

"The side of my bug," Emma supplied from the doorway with a sympathetic wince, balancing two plates that quivered with gelatin in every conceivable color. "You left a helluva dent in it. I'm not sure if that means you're supposed to pay _me_ for damages or the other way around."

She was fading by the time the doctor left, trying to memorize the numbers he had read off her chart before they lost all meaning to her and, ultimately, falling asleep while Emma and Henry had a conversation over her, fragments of it working their way in and out of her hearing until she woke to a dark room.

Everything felt sideways, her brain struggling to process the unfamiliar shapes of hospital machinery, the moonlight striking through a half-curtained window, and…the cane propped against the foot of her bed and the silhouette of a man beside it, waiting for her to speak with all the patience and guile of an asp.

 _How sharper than a serpent's tooth_.

There was a pang of fear (childish, so childish to still be afraid of this man, and yet she knew anything less was impossible) somewhere in her chest, tamped down by drugs and the haze of sleep, but her teeth were bared when she broke the silence.

"You."

Regina read amusement in the gleam of his eyes, in his bitter grin, through the darkness. "Articulate as always, I see."

"I'll have you –"

"Now, now, don't get ahead of yourself, dearie. We both know you'll be doing nothing tonight."

"Then what do you want, Gold? Am I supposed to guess? Play twenty questions?"

"As much as I would enjoy making a game of it, I'm afraid this visit is purely…business." He would sound almost sorry if he were capable of something as mundane as regret in any meaningful way. "Reckonings, and all that. It's getting a bit tiresome, really."

Regina snorted at that – _tiresome_. Oh, she knew tiredness, seemed to be ever-steeped in it while Gold and the others pursued all means to their ends indefatigably.

Her anger, her exhaustion, the uncomfortable angling of her body to keep Gold in view was making her head ache again. He was leading her to some new noose, trapping her – she could sense the closing around her neck before it ever touched – but she had no mind for his riddles, for the endless power plays between them. "So put me out of my misery. What do you _want_ from me?"

"Nothing." His chair creaked as he shifted weight forward, elbows on knees, closer to her. "I want you to do nothing. Be the Mayor, raise your son, do whatever it is that amounts to what you would call a _life_ here… and forget the Author. Let me go my way unhindered, and we'll all be –" he hesitated over the word, clenched a fist "– _happier_ for it."

"And you'll, what, rewrite reality into something monstrous so you can pretend all along you've been the hero to Emma's Dark One?" Even saying it felt wrong, like it was apt to cut her tongue. "I don't think that's how happiness works."

"Perhaps."

Gold was nearer than she thought, as he somehow always was, and pressing something cool into her hand. A phone, the light squinting her eyes and making her blink, blink, until the painful blur of the screen began to form itself into a photograph.

Regina stopped breathing on her own, Gold's victory over her astonishing in its immediacy and yet so predictable, so cunningly _obvious_ that she wondered at it despite herself. She heard the whisper of _foolish girl_ against her ear and never knew whether it was Gold's voice or her own making the accusation.

"I'll spare you the details of what I'll do to them –" he said _them_ , but everything she heard was _him_ "– should you, should anyone, try to interfere."

It was a recent picture: Robin dressed in unfamiliar clothes, and Marian laughing prettily beside him, and Roland in the middle, taller than she remembered but still in need of a haircut, as he perpetually seemed to be.

They were, undeniably, happy.

And they were damned, walking the width of a knife's edge they didn't even know existed, because of _her_.

Gold had stood, reclaiming his cane and tapping back to her, and freed the phone from her unresisting fingers, tucked it into a pocket. Regina had never seen him so somber in triumph. This was, as he had said, purely business, though there was no comfort in the fact.

His hand rose, passing neck and cheek to rest against her temple, pushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear in a gesture even her father had never used with her.

"We understand each other," he said, and there was no question in it.

The barest tip of her chin into a nod (because they did, because they always had understood the worst of each other, the weakness) and he left her to pass the night as she would, dizzy and helpless and haunted by a thread of birdsong that sang of a sky the color of _those_ eyes.

–-

She discharged herself in the morning, merely staring at those who raised a protest until they stepped back, eyes lowered, and found the appropriate paperwork for her to sign. She made one concession to their concern, which was to call Emma and ask to be driven home.

Emma, to her credit, neither sounded surprised nor argued with her, though the police cruiser arrived with a quickness that suggested she had broken several traffic laws to get there.

"Missed us that much, huh?" she cracked as Regina brushed past her into the passenger's seat.

"Something like that."

"You know, Henry's not going to be happy you pulled this little jailbreak against doctor's orders. I could stay over for a few days, if you –"

"He won't be safe now, not with Gold out there." The words guttered out of her, faint and confessional, before she could think better of it.

Emma frowned. "Who, Henry?"

"Robin."

She laid out the facts of Gold's visit tersely, reciting them with the same clinical detachment someone else might report the minutes of a town hall meeting. And, closing her eyes to speak of the threat against Robin, she felt the creep of selfishness through her, in the way she was asking-but-not-asking for the life of one man she had loved (his child, his...wife) to be measured against _all_ of their lives and found worthy.

To stand still and let Gold bend the Author to his will, or to take up arms against him – either way they, _she_ , would lose, but the mathematics of the thing were unflinchingly unambiguous in the light of day.

Such clarity could only ever burn her.

A soft touch and squeeze at her arm as Emma said, far more kindly than she had any right to be, "Hey, we'll find a way to make it right."

A resigned sort of silence fell momentarily between them, as if they were both waiting for the punchline to a joke they hadn't quite heard. Emma glanced away from the road long enough to catch her eye, and smiled with a knowingness that was half playful and half pained. "We always do."

They didn't speak of it again, in the car or in the days that followed as Regina's world again narrowed, needle-precise, to her duties as mayor and mother; to the quickening revolutions of paperwork into and out of her office as she arrived earlier and stayed later, her schedule mirroring the sun; to too much coffee and too little sleep; to nightly dinners with Henry spent discussing algebra and comic books and hypothetical uses for the town's budget surplus.

It _was_ a life, she thought firmly, in whatever few moments she was left unoccupied and vulnerable to memories of a certain sly voice against her ear. She only wondered if it would all taste less bitter had she not been forced (as if the compulsion were more than a failing in her own heart) into it.

One evening she arrived home under the full fire-blaze of sunset, later than she intended, to an empty house and a post-it note stuck to the kitchen counter: _Eating grandma's and grandpa's. Leftover lasagna in the fridge, and don't forget your vegetables! Henry_

She laughed a bit at being parented by her own teenage son, but it was colored by a thread of guilt at the thought that Henry was not entirely playacting – she was worrying him with her behavior, she knew, and she made a mental note not to work so late again.

She kicked off her heels, kneading her toes into the blessedly soft carpeting, but didn't bother to change as she set about heating up her dinner and washing dishes, wrist-deep in soapy water when the doorbell chimed and startled her into dropping a plate back into the suds.

It _would_ be like Henry to forget his keys on a night like this, she thought, barely drying her hands on a loose towel before she made her way to the door.

Emma, who never called when she could simply show up unannounced, was standing on the porch, and behind her, backed by a dying fury of light and fidgeting from foot to foot, was (her tired eyes misleading her, though the vision remained unchanged after she swiped her arm across them, and it was only her hands against the doorframe that caught her) Robin.

There was an uneasy silence around them, and a wild thrum of magic rose through Regina unbidden as she searched the yard, the skies, for any signs of incoming danger. No one had seen Gold since her encounter with him at the hospital, but why else – _how else_ – could Emma have brought _him_ here unless there had been some terrible disturbance in the magic that protected Storybrooke, or in the world outside.

"What's happened?" she demanded, arms still holding her upright against the doorway, now raising even further in defense against everything unknown.

"Nothing's happened, Regina," Emma answered gently. "Well, I mean, things _have_ happened, but everyone's fine, and Gold still hasn't poked his nose out of whatever hole he's hiding in. It's fine."

She still hadn't looked at him at all, not really, not until she had an explanation for the impossibility of his return. To look upon him, in her frightened mind, meant to break the illusion, to either see him disappear back into the ether from which he had stepped or be struck to stone herself upon meeting his too-real gaze.

"I don't understand," she whispered (she thought she did) only to Emma, quiet desperation in words and eyes. It seemed to be the only thing she could stay, had to stifle herself to keep it from pouring out in an endless chain: _I don't understand I don't understand I don't I don't_.

But Emma was already backing away, removing herself as the last obstacle between them, and Regina wanted to curse her for this betrayal. "Look, I should go – I'm technically still on the clock right now. Henry can stay at the loft tonight, okay?"

They listened to the beat of her boots receding against the pavement, the slam of a car door and flicker-to-life of an engine, and neither of them had moved, even to tremble. Neither of them had raised their eyes from the neutral territory (it felt the width of an ocean and of a raindrop at once) between them.

An untold number of heartbeats passed between them, and at last Regina stepped back, and it was not an invitation.

She walked into the house; he followed, the hesitant click of the door behind him giving her something of her strength back.

She stopped in the living room, using its formality to her advantage, pulling herself straighter while longing for her cast-off heels, and preparing to speak to him as nothing more than a man, a practical stranger.

Someone she had known, once, before learning to forget.

She turned, leaned against the back of an armchair and, refusing the same respite to him, raised her head at last. She could look at him without looking at him, a trick of the eyes, though the odd few details slipped through. His boots were the same, well-scuffed and probably tracking dirt even now; his scarf was new, green, hanging lopsided almost down to his waist.

"You're certain Roland is all right? And...Marian?" she asked, pleased that the words came out so evenly.

Robin cleared his throat, and she wondered if she had embarrassed him. "Yes, they're both well. Safe. We thought it best to leave them where they are now – well protected – until we knew more about what Gold's intentions are, and how carefully he is keeping watch here."

"I see."

The conversation stilled, both of them more than a little lost. He reached out to trail a finger absently over a ridge in the wall. "It's just how I remembered it. I've thought about this place often, since…" Regina felt him shy away from that memory in the same moment she did.

"We all have," he finished finally, and she wondered at his meaning.

"Why...why _are_ you here, Robin?"

She had named him aloud at last, almost without realizing, the word cutting keen over her tongue though it sounded ordinary when it emerged, a simple noun like any other. She didn't miss the way his hands jerked in response.

"I…" He shook his head ruefully, then seemed to laugh at himself. "It feels like a long story to tell, and one I've mislaid half the details to."

"Of course, I'm sorry," she murmured. "You must have had quite the day. A drink, perhaps?"

She didn't wait for an answer, padded over to the liquor cabinet, and purposefully reached past the whiskey ( _theirs_ no longer) to darker bottles lined up in the back. It was her own cider, sweet and stinging, that she poured into two tumblers, nudging one towards Robin in a way that offered no chance for their hands to inadvertently meet.

Her movements, her silences, were crafted to preserve every distance between them, a queen feinting around the edges of her chessboard, and Regina wondered if Robin had caught on to her defenses.

(How could he miss them, when he had always been able to read her so unerringly?)

He didn't sit, so she didn't, as if the mere act of a more companionable silence was intimacy beyond what they could bear, and they are left sipping at cider in isolation despite being near enough to touch.

She wondered, somewhat taken aback by her own cruelty, if every taste of apples reminded Robin of her.

If she so rightfully (it shamed her, to think like this) remained ever-present on his tongue, on his lips, the way he, all smoke and salt, had been scored onto hers.

"How did you cross the town line?" she asked, looking to be distracted by facts once more.

Everything she said seemed to be laced with accusation when she didn't intend it, the combative echo of _You were never supposed to come back_ that underpinned her question causing her to flinch.

"There was a scroll, magic…" Robin gestured vaguely, apologetically, with his glass. "I'm afraid I don't understand it very well myself. You'll have to ask Emma to explain it."

Oh, _yes_ , she meant to have Emma explain a great many things when next they met.

But the question, or maybe the drink, had tipped Robin into a mood to talk.

"We left New York several weeks ago, you know. It wasn't the right place for us – we felt ourselves strange there, uneasy for reasons none of us could explain. Too loud, too much, too _something_. Marian was the first to suggest we leave –" Regina felt her eyebrow quirk at that "– and Roland missed these woods, so."

He shrugged, as if the story were as simple as that: a boy missed a place that had briefly been home to him, and so they had returned.

"You can't mean to tell me you've been living at the town line all this time?"

Robin chuckled humorlessly. "No, no, not exactly. Marian and I found jobs in the nearest town – she at Roland's school, me as a mechanic, though not a very good one – and rented a little place. It's not much, but it all felt temporary anyway. Like we were just waiting."

Regina clicked her tongue against her teeth in frustration; Robin, too, had a tendency for speaking in riddles. "Waiting for what?"

"Today, I suppose. An opportunity to come…" His eyes flicked to hers, a wink of blue that threatened to blind her, and the last word came low but emphatically. " _Home_."

"But how could you have known any of this was possible?" She was trembling now, in anger or fear or something else she could not yet name. "You should have been stranded on the other side."

"I don't know." His voice rose to meet hers, equally heated. "It was only a calling, one that's been drawing me back since almost the moment I left. I had to follow."

She turned from him then, pressing herself flat against the wall in some gesture of containment. They had strayed dangerously close to the reason behind his leaving, the reason for their present agonies (perhaps only hers, as he had everything yet), and all the broken places she had worked to heal in his absence were cracking under this slightest strain.

She could sense him moving behind her and almost wished for the prick of his knife against her throat.

"It must be said, Regina," he began, hushed, and she hated him for the way he still spoke her name with reverence. "Marian and I are not...together anymore. Not as husband and wife. It was all done amicably, mutually. Truth be told, I think Marian's taken to this world better than any of us – the opportunities, the new beginnings it offers a person like her – and she deserves the freedom to discover who she might be here."

Even now she was shaking her head in refusal, guarding the last of her heart against the implications, against the hopeless promises Robin seemed to be extending to her.

"We are not the same people we once were, and we cannot pretend to be what we are not. It hurt both of us to _try_."

Her heart might break a little, for him, then. She found her voice, let it thrust as cleanly as a killing blow. "I've seen the love you hold for each other. Would you deny it?"

"Yes, we love each other." His words ached, caught between confessional and exasperated, and she took no more pleasure in hurting him like this. "And Marian will always be someone I care deeply for – as a first love, as Roland's mother, as a dear friend – but she is not the one I burn for."

It was his words that burned, the growing intensity in them speaking to their truth, and still Regina could not hear it, could not bear to.

"Who I live and die for in dreams and in the waking world and in every space in between."

He stood behind her now, the electricity of his nearness quivering between them, and she could feel how powerfully he was restraining himself from reaching out to her, his body rigid with the effort of keeping that distance, only a hand's breadth, until she opened herself to him.

He was so raw in his want when he said, "That title belongs only to you."

She was compelled to face him, so _weak_ for this man, and felt the rest of the hardness in her collapse. "And when have titles brought me anything but…"

They both know the disasters of her life too well.

"No titles, then," and he softened to her, smiling with all his gentleness. His goodness. "But you must _know_ it, Regina – know it, even if my saying it means nothing – how I've loved you for years, nearly from the moment you refused my aid in the forest."

She scoffed at that, and tried to wipe her vision clear. "Impossible."

"Inevitable." He found her hand first, brought it to rest over his heart, and eased her into his grasp. "I was fated for you, and even when fate fell through, I've always been able to find my way back to you."

"Did you steal that line from Charming?"

A thumb sang across her lower lip as Robin lifted her chin, bringing their eyes into proper alignment (a dizzying rotation, she the earth and he her axis) for the first time. "Can't steal what's been given to you."

Looking into his eyes directly, she loosed a challenge to the gods themselves, and to fate, and to all the missteps that had led them here and would lead them onwards, so long as they consented to walk them together:

 _So blind me, then._

 _So be the death of me._

–-

She dreamed.

A man raised his bow to her, released, and this time she didn't raise a hand to block the arrow's course to her heart.

It ( _he_ ) struck something vital, deep within, and, though she tasted blood, it didn't hurt.

It didn't hurt at all, this giving in.

–-

She woke to a concert of birds and the milky half-light that meant it was not yet dawn, and, despite the tiredness yawning through her, she knew she would not sleep again.

Her legs wandered to the empty side of the bed as she stretched, and that was what ultimately pulled her out of bed and down the hall, in search of the one who might occupy that lonely place again.

They had both agreed that Robin should take the guest room that night, feeling shy and somewhat awkward (above all, emotionally spent) with each other after the initial intensity of their reunion. And there she found him, spread carelessly over the covers as if he had not so much gone to sleep but fallen into it and snoring quietly. She watched the movement behind his eyelids – she had missed these small moments, how these collected details of Robin belonged to her alone – and decided not to disturb his rest for how desperately he needed it.

It was too early even for coffee, and Regina felt restless in the house, and when she spied the remnants of a loaf of bread in the kitchen (reminding her to go grocery shopping, now that there was another mouth to feed) it felt like a sign.

She had an old friend to visit, after all.

She walked to the office, reveling in the coolness of the morning even as she shivered through the dew, with her offering carefully wrapped in paper and held close to the chest.

She thought he might be waiting at the windowsill for her (the man and the bird sharing a sense of exquisite timing), but it seemed he meant to keep her for a while today. It had become a ritual in patience, to crack open the window and scatter a feast of crumbs below and sit, thumbing through paperwork, until the robin announced his arrival with a distinctive call to her.

Foregoing the administrative ledgers this time, she saw the bird's approach, winging into view and up before diving to settle on the sill with a ruffling of feathers. He regarded her, a lightning-quick shuttling of his head, and chirped his sliding two-note before pecking happily at the bread left for him.

"Hello to you, too," Regina answered, only to stiffen in horror as someone – and who but Robin would track her here? – cleared his throat behind her, belatedly knocking on the doorframe.

She spun out of her chair in a moment, deliberately positioning herself between Robin and the window as if she could still – she _needed_ to – keep the bird from his sight. But she knew, from his face, that the secret, too tender for anyone's scrutiny, was already lost, and she felt the hurt of it like a bruise.

"What are you doing here?"

Robin looked at his boots, rocking onto his heels a bit with all the shyness of a boy. "Missing you. I woke up, and you weren't – I thought we might have breakfast together." He cut a glance up at her, looking past her shoulder. "But if you're busy, I can –"

"No," she said, reaching out a hand to stop him, and just like that the charade was dropped. "No, I'm not busy. I couldn't sleep, and we had some extra bread, so..."

She gestured to the window and let the scene speak for itself. The robin watched as Robin came to her, looking thoughtful, and placed his hand against the curve of her spine. Regina felt ridiculous, then less so as Robin kneaded the tension from her back, and she tucked herself tighter against his side, unbearably grateful.

"Sometimes I forget these pass for robins here," was all he said. "They're so different from what we had in Sherwood."

"They are, aren't they?" she mused, thinking of the smaller birds, with full throats of color, that inhabited the Enchanted Forest. Then, quieter, "I suppose we make do with what we have."

Robin's breath caught a little at that, and she knew him winded by guilt and grief (they should never be his but he wore them anyway) when his fingers tightened over her back.

Still, when he turned into her to ask "Breakfast?" and brush a kiss above her ear, he only smiled, and they both breathed evenly, together, again.

She arched an eyebrow teasingly. "If you remember your way around the kitchen."

"I do." He said it with such unshakeable certainty, and every nerve under her skin buzzed with warmth.

"I'd like to –" she nudged her head towards the window, where the robin was alternately chasing down his crumbs and cocking his head to listen to their conversation.

"Take all the time you need, love." Another kiss to her shoulder, and she was left to say goodbye on her own.

She moved to stand at the window, careful not to startle her robin into flight, and let the silence, the light breeze stirring past them, endure a little while longer.

A little while yet.

He was only a bird – and her solace, and a beginning, and far too clever, too knowing, to have been _only_ anything.

But a bird, and one who chirruped for her attention with a medley of notes that sounded oddly like a blessing before he skipped away, bound back for the trees before she even saw his wings open.

She knew, somehow, that he would be there tomorrow, and the day after (she had spoiled the thing after all, she told herself laughingly, though that took none of the magic out of it), and she would meet each of his returns with gladness. And an offering of more than crumbs.

(She was speaking of the bird, of course – for, though she might find the same delight in Robin's every coming, he invited a different sense of wonder, all his own, and it was more than the promise of breakfast that quickened her step back to him, that spurred her flight onward into his waiting arms.)

* * *

I owe a great many thanks to the people who kept this story going and waited so patiently for an ending (you know who you are), and to all of you who have invested your reading time in this fic. Thank you!


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